Managers
Contagion from recent political upheaval, including former FBI director Mark Comey’s leaked memo and continued concerns over alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, has been reasonable, according to Lyxor.
It comes amid persisting signs of decent global growth and contained anxieties about China.
In its latest weekly brief, the firm writes: “The Lyxor Hedge Fund index was up +0.4 per cent as of Tuesday. Macro funds outperformed on their long European equities and long energy. Special situations continued to make steady progress. L/S equity fund returns were mixed, reflecting heterogeneous impact from the sudden market rotation.
Acadian Asset Management, a firm overseeing USD82 billion in active global and international quantitative assets, has launched a sustainable Emerging Markets ex Fossil Fuel strategy.
This strategy is one of the first to focus on implementing this theme across emerging markets.
Acadian, the first quantitative manager to sign the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI), has always seen responsible investing as an integral part of its investment process, with dedicated ESG resources in place.
Acadian created this strategy to help meet growing investor demand for divestment within portfolios, while maintaining investment return potential and ensuring investors
Euronext has acquired around 90 per cent of FastMatch for a USD153 million initial cash consideration.
FastMatch’s management will remain invested with a circa 10 per cent interest, with minority rights. Closing is subject to regulatory and anti-trust approvals, and is expected to occur in Q3 2017.
This bolt-on acquisition is part of Euronext’s strategy to actively leverage its balance sheet flexibility to capture value accretive opportunities and to accelerate growth and diversification of the revenue base in line with its ambitions. As such, the investment in FastMatch will not consume any resource dedicated to the deployment of
MainstreamBPO has executed sale agreements to acquire Trinity Fund Administration in Ireland and the Cayman Islands.
Privately owned Trinity currently provides administrative, transfer agency, company register, corporate secretarial, risk and regulatory reporting and other ancillary services to over 140 funds and investment vehicles incorporated in a variety of jurisdictions.
The acquisition will increase MainstreamBPO’s client base and funds under administration. Trinity currently services or administers assets in the region of USD7 billion.
Trinity was founded in 1993 by CEO John McCann, and has received recognition from the international funds industry on numerous occasions including being awarded the
The global hedge fund practice of Citigate Dewe Rogerson, an international financial and corporate communications consultancy, has added 20 new clients in less than a year since it was launched.
Client strategies covered include equity long/short, credit, quant, event-driven, activist, distressed, global macro, FX, emerging markets, biotech, disruptive tech and SRI.
The practice, centred on London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore, is led by senior director Christen Thomson, a former deputy CEO of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global representative of the alternative investment industry. During his six years with AIMA, Thomson worked closely
Client collateral deposits at Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment firm, have exceeded DKK100 billion – a record high.
2016 was marked by a number of high profile political events, namely the UK EU referendum on 23 June and the US election on 8 November.
With a total of 490,000 client trades on 9 November 2016, the day after the US election, Saxo Bank reached a new record in trading activity.
With the French election on 7 May and the upcoming UK election on 8 June 2017, there continue to be events that demand attention
Ivy Investment Management Company (IICO) has partnered with sub-adviser firm PineBridge to launch the Ivy PineBridge High Yield Fund.
The fund is managed by IICO and sub-advised by PineBridge Investments, a firm with more than USD80 billion in assets under management.
The new fund seeks to provide total return through a combination of high current income and capital appreciation, primarily by investing in a diversified portfolio of high-yield, high-risk fixed income securities from both US and foreign issuers.
This fund joins the Ivy High Income Fund as an investment option offered by the firm in the high-yield
Conquest Capital’s Conquest STAR UCITS Fund, a systematic absolute return trading strategy, has launched on ML Capital’s MontLake UCITS Platform.
MontLake is an independent platform for UCITS funds that provides investors with access to a range of liquid, transparent and regulated investment products domiciled in Dublin.
Conquest STAR is a pure alpha, short-term systematic trading strategy. The programme has been designed to capture independent alpha from short-term trading opportunities regardless of the risk environment in both “risk-seeking” and “risk-averse” regimes. The fund uses four sub-strategies employing dozens of models to dynamically allocate risk based on the Conquest Risk
The demand for infrastructure funds remains evidently strong. Last year, these vehicles raised USD62.9 billion in aggregate based on figures provided by Preqin*. In Q1 2017, that number had already reached USD29.5 billion; nearly twice the amount raised in Q1 2016 (USD16 billion).
“We’ve seen increasing interest in infrastructure deals, both listed and unlisted,” states Michael McCabe (pictured), Head of US Sales, MUFG Investor Services, the global asset servicing arm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. “The number of deals in Q1 2017 for the US totalled USD50 billion and was fairly concentrated in the energy sector; natural resources, utilities, power
Infrastructure has become a key area of focus for institutional investors as they look to diversify their fixed income portfolios to access longer term, resilient credit opportunities for income-like returns. Within this asset class, infrastructure debt is on the rise as investment managers look to construct new debt vehicles: either to provide direct lending to infrastructure operators, to access well-established municipal bond markets, or to structure their own private lending programmes by issuing tranches of unlisted bonds.
Last September, Schroders established a new infrastructure finance capability designed specifically to help institutional investors access the asset class.
Commenting on infrastructure finance
